Beginner's Guide: Crafting Compelling Characters

A story, whether it be a short story, a novel or a screenplay, is about the characters and their journey from the beginning of the story to the climax at the end. Since the characters are such an important part of the story creation, it is necessary that a great deal of thought and creativity go into the development of the characters.

In conducting fiction writing workshops, I noticed that writers new to fiction writing had trouble with their character design, even with a template I handed out to assist them. They didn't have any trouble with the physical attributes and they struggled a bit with the character's biography. The big problem they had came with the metal aspects of the character. I also noticed that this problem was universal: all of them had this problem. The template I handed out had questions like: What are the character's dreams and What is the character's dominant reader emotion. To a new fiction writer, questions like these are almost impossible to answer given their limited background in writing. They simply don't know how to address the question.

Thinking about these issues lead me to understand that newbie fiction writers need examples and guidance in addition to a template. That was the genesis of this video class.

Using the template as a starting point, I researched what made a character great and inserted my research into the video. Other research points include: What do writers get wrong when developing a main character and In developing a character, what are the most important traits? and But, what if the character is the antagonist?

I also examined what factors made well-known characters great. For instance, my videos delve into why Scarlett O'Hara (the main character from Gone With The Wind) is a great character. I performed similar research for Yossarian (the main character in Catch-22) and Inspector Clouseau (from the Pink Panther movies). This research forms an important part of the video lessons.

A list of main lessons in the course include:

• Introduction: Great character reports

• Physical description

• Biography: Includes how the character thinks and wants out of life

• Mental attributes: For both protagonist, antagonist and other main characters

• Character arc: Developing a necessary story within the story

• Dominant reader emotion: Understanding how the character relates to the readers

• Flaws: Making the character human

• Motivation: Why does the character care about solving the plot problem?
  

All of these lessons contain research reports on its importance and what is needed to make the character great. In addition, the course includes a downloadable character development template that you can use to see how the videos and the template match up.

The video course also contains an extra section. Writing a story such as a novel or a screenplay involves a vast amount of information besides the characters. There are scenes, plots, settings, and so many other elements. There are a number of ways to organize this information but I prefer whiteboards. A whiteboard provides a way to organize this information in a flexible manner that allows for easy retrieval. This extra material provides an in-depth look at how to whiteboard a story and provides a template that can be used for your story.